


D-A-N-C-E_Live.mp3

by SylphOfPaperPlanes



Category: Baby Driver (2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Car Accidents, Concussions, Crime Family, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 08:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11551275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylphOfPaperPlanes/pseuds/SylphOfPaperPlanes
Summary: Baby’s about half of the way through a routine Midtown bank job and a third of the way through Justice’s Access All Arenas when a cop car rams into the getaway car.---No heist that Baby's ever been a part of has gone wrong, but there was one that didn't go right.





	D-A-N-C-E_Live.mp3

**Author's Note:**

> I sat down to write a quick car chase set to one of my favorite albums, Access All Arenas by Justice, a thousand words, max. Instead, I ended up writing a behemoth of a fic exploring Baby's character and motivations, alongside that of those around him. Some notes before I start:
> 
>   * Content warnings include car crashes, description of concussions, very vague reference to domestic violence, and canon typical violence.
>   * My knowledge of concussions is based on my own experiences with them. Additionally, any medical inaccuracies are kind of hand-waved away by the action-movie nature of the setting. If Buddy can survive as long as he does in canon, Baby can be able to sleep after a concussion.
>   * I apologize to any Atlanta natives for butchering your geography for the sake of plot.
>   * For anyone interested, the point in the album that the fic starts out at is [right here](https://youtu.be/hxSaI9xNgIY?t=26m28s). 
> 


Baby’s about half of the way through a routine Midtown bank job and a third of the way through Justice’s  _ Access All Arenas _ when a cop car rams into the getaway car. He only spots it at the last minute in the rearview, just long enough to jerk the wheel and brace before it sends them into a tailspin.

His spine is thrown against his seat. His shoulder hits the door. His ipod flies from the cupholder, tethered by the earbuds with its screen lit up and music pulsing, suspended in the air for a long moment before everything snaps back into reality and the wheels hit the ground and all of the crew sways back into place and they go careening off again. 

In the back of his mind, it registers how fucking lucky he is that they didn’t flip, but his skull is ringing from getting thrown back against the headrest, and somewhere in the collision, his foot lifted from the gas. 

Someone in the car is yelling at him. Loud.

The sound of syllables are smudges and the guy’s lips are blurry like he’s speaking through frosted glass, and Baby can’t catch a word of it. For a moment, all he seems to be yelling is “ _ Do the D-A-N-C-E, one-two-three-four-fight, stick to the B-E-A-T, Get ready to ignite”  _ before it coalesces into shouts of _ “Get the fuck going, holy fuck that cop is coming back around again, can you hear me kid so help me I’ll— _ “

Baby looks away, maneuvering the car as it’s slowing, as the cops are catching up with all their sirens like an approaching harmony in the distance. He completes the turn that the tailspin had put them in, lining them up to stare down the fleet of headlights in the darkening evening. 

Someone’s still yelling from the backseat loud and shrill, but the bass is building, he needs to time the beat  _ just right _ to make it perfect. The pounding in his head is killer, but he  _ needs _ to do this, needs to get it right.

He closes his eyes, breathes, just a second more, he can feel it burning in his eardrums with the crowd roaring behind the sound, the line of Ford Crown Victorias coming fast. There’s a hand on his shoulder, shaking him hard, but he only needs a second, one more, wait, wait,  _ wait _ .

He inhales.

He exhales.

An arena of sound explodes in his ears.

 

And he guns it.

 

Everything past that point seems like a blur, and Baby know that he’s sloppy, but every few times he blinks he’s seeing double. He remembers the rest of the ride in snapshots: driving in the thin gap between two cop cars with a metallic screech while knocking off the mirrors, drifting on corners of residential streets to the fading notes of Horsepower and New Lands, wincing at the noise of bullets through the back windshield that interrupt Stress, watching in his rearview as one of the crew leans out of the window to fire back, pulling into a parking garage with vision blurry vision and the sound of metal crunching on metal echoing in his ears.

He finally takes a shuddery breath under the last song of the album kicking on. It’s all cheers and fluttering synths as he takes the key out of the ignition and steps out into the muggy Atlanta air, the evening strangely lit by the garage’s icy blue lights. Their switch car, a quaint little four door Volvo, is there, pristine and clean for the trip back to homebase with the police as far off their trail as can be, but he’s missing any feeling of elation, the rush replaced by dread in the pit of his stomach and pulsing lights behind his eyes.

It’s only when Baby runs his tongue along the inside of his teeth and tastes blood that he realizes that he’d bitten clean through the inside of his lip in the crash.

Baby knows he shouldn’t feel like this. He fucked up, didn’t notice something quick enough, got banged up in the process. His head hasn’t hurt this bad since— 

Since. 

But that doesn’t excuse how bad he fucked up, almost endangering one of the heists, and he doesn’t know if he feels sick to his stomach from whatever’s going on in his head or whatever’s going to go on once he gets back and Doc finds out about this.

While he’s standing there trying to figure out whether he’s got it together enough to take a few steps forward, while Phantom Pt. II is playing its twinkling, thrumming notes, the crew member in the passenger seat gets out and stomps over to where Baby’s holding himself up against the side of the car. He’s the one that’d been yelling at him earlier, and for the life of him Baby can’t remember what his name is.

“What the fuck was that?” he asks. All Baby can do is shake his head.

“Wasn’t fast enough,” Baby says. It sounded cool when Neo said it in  _ The Matrix _ , but on his tongue it seems weak. Like an excuse.

“No, fuck that,” he says. “You get hit, you get back up, we all know that. I’m talking about  _ this _ .” He taps his heel against the deep scratches like metal canyons in the side of the Jeep. “It’s fucking reckless, that’s what it is.” He knows he’s being spoken to, but all Baby can focus on are the shoes that the guy’s wearing, loafers so strangely shiny for someone who just cleared out a bank, like they’ve never been scuffed up before.

He snaps twice in Baby’s face, and his blurry attention goes back up to a face twisted by anger and annoyance. “Risking all our lives for a cool trick? Chasing a high that’ll get us busted? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I’m not,” Baby says, because he  _ isn’t _ . “Saw a way out I knew I could take. I took it.” By this point, the rest of the crew has gotten out on the other side of the car, watching in silence. 

“And what if you couldn’t? What if we all got smeared on the side of the road because you couldn’t fucking run away properly? We risk our asses on robbing a bank, kid, and you get it easy. We don’t need you to go trying to kill us the second time around with your damn soundtrack.”

“Step off, Goodie,” Darling says, and goddamn, Baby must really be out of it if he forgot that she and Buddy were on this run. She makes her way around the car, placing a hand on his arm (more like plastering herself along his side, but he knows the gesture and its meaning from her). From this close, Baby can smell her perfume trying to smother him, but he doesn’t move.

“I’ll step off,  _ sweetheart _ , once Doc knows how his pet is endangering us with his little tunes—”

Buddy’s fist hits the roof of the car. Baby knew this Goodie guy was a goner the second the word  _ sweetheart  _ left his lips. “You think you can drive any better, pal? Your lazy ass couldn’t even be bothered to help empty tills.”

“It’s not about me here, it’s about how Boy Wonder is gonna get fucking  _ crucified _ the second we get back to the warehouse if I have any say in it.”

If Baby wasn’t sick to his stomach before, he was now, and all he can think about is how he’ll be a few fingers down at the end of the day for sure, how he’s gotta get a word in with Doc before this guy fucks up his reputation, cuts him off while he still has debts to pay. He knows he’s not entirely coherent, knows its adrenaline and fight or flight and whatever got him fucked up six ways from Sunday, but self preservation trumps everything while bile curls at the back of his throat. This is all he’s got, all he’s good at, and Goodie is gonna send it all down the drain because he didn’t check his mirrors a second early enough. 

His heartbeat’s so loud that it almost drowns out the roar in his ears.

Baby pushes off the side of the car, trying to find his feet in the blur. He has to get to the warehouse, has to go tell Doc what happened because he needs to prove that he’s useful. He feels Darling’s hands slip from his arm without (much) resistance. It wasn’t just some dangerous trick, no, he knew what he was doing and it sure as hell wasn’t for a high.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Goodie asks, or at least Baby thinks he does, as the two fractured images of him step into Baby’s path toward the Volvo until he blinks back to one. 

“I’m going to prove you wrong,” he grits out between teeth that are probably stained with blood. The words taste harsh in his mouth, and it only makes the ringing in his ears worse with every syllable. The music is building again in his ears and he just needs to get to the car, or else. If he faints now, he knows that’s it and he can say goodbye to the life he’s carved out of this city. He knows what happens to people that fuck up Doc’s plans, no matter how many heists they’ve pulls or deals they’ve ran.

“Like fuck you are.”

“Like fuck I am,” Baby parrots, and like a dull thrum in the back of his mind he realizes that this is the most he’s spoken in at least a year. He doesn’t know if it’s panic or courage, but there’s steel in his voice. “Move.”

For a long moment, all Baby registers is the music building in his ears, the snarl on Goodie’s face, the strange lighting of the parking garage, like they’re in  _ Tron _ and every pixel of him is buzzing with a crescendo of panic.

Which is why Baby barely notices when Goodie punches him. 

His eyelids are already fluttering shut when the ground starts to rush up to meet him, and the last notes are rattling between his ears, all cheers and hollers. Somewhere, he feels a hand grab him, save his face from smashing into the pavement. Someone’s yelling, and hands are shaking his shoulders, but he feels like he can’t break the surface. There are tears at the corner of his eyes and the music's fading out while the ringing is fading back in, but he can’t tear the last of his blurry focus off of two, shiny, shiny loafers before his vision fades.

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Baby’s mother had a black eye once.

Baby remembers her putting makeup over half of her face, delicate and light over the dark bruise. The bulbs framing the mirror made her reflection hazy with their bright yellow glow from where he watched over her shoulder.

_ Why you got that, Mama? _ he asked, and she just shook her head. He was too young to notice all the things he should have noticed, like if her hands were shaking, if the small smile on her lips was sad or not.

_ Don’t you worry _ , she said. He hates that this memory is fading like the rest of them. It feels like he’s seeing all of this through a tunnel.

 

It’s childish, but he misses her so much it aches.

 

_ Don’t you worry,  _ she said.  _ Don’t you worry, Baby. _

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“I can explain,” Goodie says, and Baby hears it through the ringing in his ears and the heartbeat thudding a bassline just behind his eyes. His headache’s still killer, and for a strange second, he thinks he’s still at home in his bed and everything was just a bad dream.

Everything is coming in slow, but he thinks he feels the cool metal surface of a tabletop against the left side of his face. It’s welcome, with how the skin around his eye feels swollen and sluggish when he tries to open it before ultimately giving up. He tries his right eye, and manages to see through his eyelashes into the harsh industrial lighting of the warehouse. He was right; he’s lying curled up on the large table with his back facing the blackboard. Right in front of him is the crumpled remnants of his shades, with the left lens nothing more than a pile of shards. Still, even with wincing against the light, there's a warm weight over his shoulders, and in some backwards way it feels like he’s home.

The rest of the crew is standing near the elevator, Buddy and Darling basically propping each other up with how heavily they’ve leaning into each other. Baby wouldn’t notice anything wrong, had it not been for Darling running her hand through his hair every few seconds and Buddy tapping out a staccato beat on her hip with his fingertips. Goodie is leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, and Doc’s standing far enough away to have a hand on the back of a chair, face impassive from where Baby can see it in profile.

No one seems to notice that he’s woken up, so he only keeps his good eye open a sliver. Everything’s slightly blurred in the fluorescents, but he can still see the shapes of lips move around an excuse.

"He hit himself with the car door." 

"He hit himself with the car door." Doc repeats, voice deadpan. 

"Yeah."

"Strange how the door got him dead in the eye, knocked him out, and caused the knuckles on your right hand to swell.” Baby watches as Doc’s fingers tighten on the back of the chair. “How much of an idiot do you think I am, Two Shoes?”

He can see how Goodie’s smile flattens, then sinks. He starts to stammer out a response, but Doc barely seems to be paying him any attention.

“No really, how stupid do you assume I am?” Though he wasn’t raising his voice, though his tone wasn’t changing, Baby could swear Doc’s voice was filling the room. “I want to hear it. I want to hear what bright idea brought to the conclusion that you could invalidate what little trust I gave you without any consequences.”

Silence.

“What was it? Did he say something to you?” Doc’s voice is just the barest hint scathing, condescending, and if he could open his left eye, Baby would probably pity Goodie, but, well. “You knocked out the kid that saved your life no less than seven times during a car chase. Maybe he was humming a little. Maybe he didn’t answer your questions. Maybe he took a turn too tight and made you carsick. Well, I don’t give a shit. You signed on for this job, so you signed on for my team. When you sit down in that car, money in hand be damned, you place the same amount of trust on that kid that I place on you—no fuck it, more, because I sure as hell don’t care if you die in the process. There’s a reason I trust that kid exponentially more than I’ll ever trust the likes of you, and that’s because he can take it at face value and not try to go behind my back. So tell me, Goodie, what kind of a fool. Do. You. Take. Me. For.”

The room gets a kind of still that Baby hasn’t seen in a long time. Expressions are frozen on faces. Nobody dares to breathe. The air solidifies in its place. 

The room gets the kind of silent that makes Baby want to record it.

Suddenly, Doc straightens up, regains composure he never lost. It’s as though he hasn’t just snapped in the imperceptible way that he did, and everything is all surface southern civility. The air itself exhales in its wake.

“Buddy, Darling, why don’t you two go enjoy your evening?” They don’t have to be asked twice, but, holding his hand in her firm grip, Darling drags Buddy over to the table where Baby’s curled up. Baby looks down and closes his eye until everything is a blurry crescent of light so that they don’t notice. The warm weight rises from over his shoulders along with wisps of perfume and Baby realizes that it’d been Darling’s fur coat draped over him like a blanket.

“Don’t forget to take your cut,” Doc says over his shoulder, and Baby can hear the rasp of the strap of a duffel bag behind him as Buddy grabs it. 

On his way to the elevator, he touches Baby’s shoulder and Darling places a glossy-lipped kiss to his temple. “Nobody puts Baby in the corner,” she whispers and Baby can hear the satisfied, conspiratorial smirk in her voice. There’s a genuineness in the gestures that he knows wouldn’t be present if he was awake, but before he can even think about what that means, the elevator door is dinging, and two sets of of footsteps leave. He feels like this is happening around a different version of him, one lying on the table while the real him is falling, falling, falling back into darkness.

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Baby wore nice dress shoes to his parents’ funeral.

He doesn’t remember the event, or even where the headstones are, but he remembers standing in the rain, wearing a pair of shoes his mom had gotten him for a wedding they never ended up going to. 

( _ You’ll be cool like Johnny Cash _ , she said, like they weren’t standing in the clearance section of Payless, and he ate it up. The black maybe-sort-of-leather shined like oil, like midnight, like a record.)

The arch was too high and the front of the shoe cut into his toes any time he moved, so bad that it made him want to cry frustrated tears on top of everything else. He couldn’t hear the service over the ringing in his ears but he had been getting good at seeing the shapes of words on lips, so he knew it was about heaven and love and all those things that Mama would sing about on Sunday mornings before church while making pancakes and bacon.

He felt the mud sink around his feet, dulling the oil slick, clouding midnight.

 

He bet Johnny Cash didn’t even wear loafers.

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When Baby wakes up again, his headache’s subsided enough that it’s just a constellation of points of pain.

It’s dark and he’s in the passenger seat of a neat little family sedan that screams burner, like it’s going to get ditched in the space between point A and point B. It’s parked on a scenic lookout, the type that would be called Makeout Point had it not been edging on midnight on Thursday, with raindrops dotting the windshield every few seconds. The radio is on and, in between the static, Baby can hear some easy listening station that’s been turned on low. He doesn’t know how he got here, but from what he can see in the dim light of the dashboard he’s wearing his seatbelt and Doc’s suit jacket is draped over the center console. His own jacket’s been rolled up and wedged between his head and shoulder, and he can smell the trace of cheap detergent embedded in the fabric.

He felt like this would be a scene in a movie, a nice moment for a happy ending, if a broken sob didn’t come from outside the car. 

Baby doesn’t want to see this, knows he doesn’t want to see this, and he turns up the radio enough to drown out the roaring in his ears and the wordless screaming that sounds an awful lot like Goodie. He thinks they’re playing an instrumental of a song by The Hollies.

It’s only when he shifts his head slightly that he sees the scene in the rearview mirror, Goodie with his hands tied behind his back and Doc towering over him, pistol in hand. When the sobs start dissolving into words, they’re being yelled loud enough for Baby to hear over the music which, in a way, he’s thankful for, because he can’t see his face from the angle he’s at.

"I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it! Look, I'm sorry I said that to the kid, I'm sorry I lied to you, I'm sorry, I promise it won't happen again, just please, please—"

Doc kicks him in the chest, knocking the air out of the prone figure. Baby doesn’t think he’s seen him this angry in all the years he’s known him. 

“I don’t care,”  Doc says, and it’s not restrained condescension in his voice, but bitter malice. Even in the rain splattered mirror, he can see the disgust on his face. "Don't let the door hit you on your way out."

Baby turns away because he knows what comes next. He buries his face in the soft cotton of his sweatshirt, focusing on breathing in the scent of laundromat-clean beneath everything else.

Three gunshots in quick succession.

Baby doesn't fight to stay awake.

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His family’s house had a washer, but not a dryer, and that meant every Sunday afternoon, weather permitting, the backyard would be filled with sundresses and t-shirts and bright white sheets along clotheslines strung between the big trees that hung over the lawn. 

Baby remembers his mom dragging out their old stereo, as far as the cord would let it, and she’d sit in a plastic lawn chair while The Beatles and Beach Boys sang about love and relationships and everything else Baby didn’t understand. Sometimes she’d be laughing at dime novels open in her lap and sometimes she’d be singing along with Here Comes The Sun, but Baby was always running around in the maze created by pillowcases and diner uniforms. The air smelled like detergent and sunshine, like cotton and home. He remembers lying in the grass, letting her voice wash over him on the other side of fluttering sheets. His clothes for the rest of the week would feel sunlight-stiff against his skin, but it didn’t matter because he’d still smell the summer afternoon in the collar.

For years after the accident, he’d tried to find that one brand of detergent, tried to find that one scent that filled his dreams of leaf-dappled sunlight over quilts and lilting lyrics on supermarket shelves with a hundred other bottles. He forgets so much day in and day out, and he just wants to have one thing from then that isn’t a scar.

He still hasn’t found it.

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When Baby wakes up again, he hears the engine humming with the wheels and feels the light bumps of the road before he even opens his eyes. When he does, he’s in the passenger seat of a different car, and Doc’s driving. The radio’s on again, and this time it’s playing quiet jazz. He doesn’t recognize the street they’re on, but he thinks they’re somewhere downtown. 

He moves to stretch his shoulders, stiff with the uncomfortable way they’ve been slumped, but stops when the pain stretches under his skin. His brain doesn’t take kindly to being moved, and he just leans back against the headrest in compromise.

Even though Doc doesn’t look away from the road, he must have noticed Baby shifting around. His grip loosens on the wheel, and some of the tension fades from his face.

“What size shoe are you, Baby?”

The question catches him off guard, but he answers.

“There’s a nice pair of loafers in the trunk just your size, if you want them.” 

Baby just shakes his head in response, which he regrets immediately from the way his vision swims. He doesn’t want to wear a dead man’s shoes, brand new with an uncomfortable arch and tight toes.

Doc executes a turn the way one might if they’ve driven for the past forty years of their life on residential streets. Baby knows he’ll never end up driving like that, under the speed limit with the blinker and everything. 

Somewhere behind them, Baby hears sirens, and his breath stops in his throat. It’s getting closer, and it’s throwing red and blue around the cab of their car as it’s fast approaching, and fuck if this is a set up to get him caught because they know Baby’s face and not Doc’s. This is what he gets for making a stupid maneuver and trying to talk back to Goodie and they’re going to lock him up for god knows how many heists—

Doc signals and pulls onto the shoulder to let the ambulance pass.

“Relax, Baby.” He says it in a way that sounds just on the verge of long-suffering, like he’d just had a difficult day at the office, not that he’d just killed a man for lying to him. He looks over his shoulder before pulling back onto the road.“You have a concussion. You’re going to need an MRI, CAT scan, the works.”

Baby doesn’t trust him,

“You don’t trust me,” Doc says, and it’s not a question.

“I trust you,” Baby says, and he bites his tongue to keep from saying ‘ _ I trust everyone. It’s the devil inside them I don’t trust’  _ because he knew Doc would get the reference, and still wouldn’t take lightly to a) being compared to the devil and, more importantly, b) being compared to everyone else.

It’s then that they drive into the parking lot of the hospital, an imposing white brick building all lit up in the dead of night. Baby tries to hide the way his breath quickens because, while it’s not the same hospital as before, it’s still a hospital, and he still has vivid memories of machine beeps and whines and IVs and the worst the tinnitus had ever been.

“You been in a hospital since the accident?”

“No.” That answer seems to tell Doc everything he needed to know, twice more than Baby figured he was saying.

Doc takes the key from the ignition and gets out of the car, so Baby does the same. It’s awkward stepping out on this side, like he’s doing everything in a mirror, like he’s forgetting something as he closes the door behind him. It takes him a minute to settle his weight on his feet, but Doc is right there, putting Baby’s arm over his shoulder to support him as the car locks with a click. 

As they’re walking through the lot, Doc’s talking in a voice so low that it’s basically whisper. “As far as they’re concerned, you got into an accident, just one of your friends speeding, hitting a parked car. You were in the passenger seat, had your seatbelt and everything like a good kid. They won’t ask any questions past that.” The soles of Baby’s hightops have worn pretty thin, and he focuses on feeling each individual grain of the pavement as they walk.

Before Doc even holds the door open for Baby to enter the harsh white light of the building, the smell of antiseptic has gotten under his skin. He’s not unconscious, but he’s just letting things happen around him. He feels like he has the agency of his twelve year old self again, being led to sit down in the waiting room, watching Doc fill out forms on a rickety clipboard, listening to one hit wonders warble out over the speaker system. He taps his heel on the tile, listens to the other patients breathe to the beat, cough like drums. Someone gets called over the intercom, pausing the music, and everyone freezes for a second before they sink back into the flow. A child whispers to his mother across the room. A man with a bandage on his arm snores. The chorus kicks up again. The intercom buzzes. Stillness. Motion. The cycle repeats.

By the time he looks up from the outpatient orchestra, Doc’s gone up the front desk, handing in the forms and talking with one of the nurses. Baby reads his lips and sees words like  _ stupid accident  _ and  _ just a concussion _ and  _ my son _ .

Even though he doesn’t hear the words, they start ringing in his ears. He wishes he could record that, just to listen back to it on repeat because it must sound so strange in the mouth of a criminal mastermind. Even Joe doesn’t say  _ my son _ , because he’s not that exactly.

The nurse glances over to where he’s sitting.  _ I can see the resemblance, _ she says, and maybe she’s just trying to be nice, but Baby is trying not to laugh. He’s overtired with a killer headache and Doc is saying something about how  _ he really takes after his mother, you know _ , and this is it, this is what his life is now.

They call his name on the speakers, or, well, a first name attached to a last name he recognizes from the registration he found in a glove box years back while Doc waves him on. 

( _ My son _ .)

He lies down on a hospital bed and a doctor checks his pupils and his pulse. He asks for the story, and Baby repeats it word for word. 

“What about the black eye?” the doctor asks, and Baby freezes.

“What about it?”

“How did you get it?”

“I, uh, hit myself with the car door.”

He catches a look on Doc’s face, and he doesn’t recognize it. Amused. Proud.

( _ My son, my son, my son, my son.  _ It’s a bassline. It’s a lie.)

He goes in and out of machines. There are beeps and hums and squeaky wheels of passing crash carts. His tinnitus is getting bad with the pounding of his headache, and he asks a nurse to put on something. She hesitates and says no, because he has a concussion and isn’t supposed to listen to music. That just about breaks his heart, but he tries to play any number of songs in his head to distract himself.

He has to stay completely still in the MRI: can’t tap his fingers, can’t nod his head, can’t hum. They have to restart it three times before he gets it right.

Once he’s out of the last machine, he’s free to go, and Doc’s back at his shoulder, guiding him out through the waiting room, through the parking lot, and finally into the passenger seat of what he can now see is a sleek black Mercedes.

The night’s started to take on some weird transient feeling, like the world is too big and small at the same time. The AC is on in the car even though it’s not too warm out anymore; the radio’s on so low that Baby doesn’t notice until they’ve gone at least half a mile.

A moment passes before Baby feels like he can break the silence with a question that’s been burning him from the inside out.

"I can't listen to music?"

"You can listen to music." A beat. "Nothing loud. Nothing fast. Stick with classical and jazz."

"What about soft rock?"

"No."

"What about rock, but I just play it real low?"

"Hell no."

"Lo fi hip hop?"

"I don't even know what that is, so no.” They stop at a light, and Doc turns to face him. “As long as it'd play in an elevator and doesn't give you a headache, be my guest, but otherwise stay off it. Look," he says, and he reaches into his jacket pocket, and takes out an ipod. He spins the click wheel with practiced ease, and places it into Baby’s hands right as the light turns green.

It’s the same one he’d been listening to during the crash: a first gen mini in a bright pink, the one with  _ For Sara _ engraved on the back. The screen’s cracked, but the backlight display still works fine. It’s one of his miscellaneous ones, one he only brings when he knows he wants a song on it for a heist. Still, Frank Sinatra’s discography is staring him in the face, and he doesn’t hesitate in throwing in the earbuds and turning the volume to just the right level.

“Any more burning questions about the state of your grey matter?”

"Should I have been sleeping?"

"Buddy said you were able to walk and talk, so you should be fine. Your brain needs rest, Baby." 

Baby nods, and this time it doesn’t feel like his head is turning to mush. He’s exhausted, but he doesn’t want to sleep anymore. He’s sick of fading in and out, but time is passing like he still is. He blinks one moment and they’re on a main road, the next they’re on the freeway, the next they’re at a stoplight.

Sinatra is singing in his ears about a girl from Ipanema and while he doesn’t know where that is, he’s starting to recognize the buildings around the car once they get off the freeway for what feels like the third time. As much as he’s “The Spirit of 85” who knows the city streets inside and out, he’s also an over-exhausted barely-adult with a concussion who’s never perused Atlanta at the speed limit like this.

It has, however, crossed his mind that maybe, just maybe, Doc has no idea how to traverse his own city but won’t fess up to being lost.

At another stoplight—this one is definitely familiar, and Baby thinks they might have been at this intersection just a few minutes before—Doc pauses, and he closes his eyes for a long second. When he speaks, he sounds tired and worried in a vulnerable way that Baby didn’t expect.

"Is anyone expecting you home?"

(He thinks back to his conversation with Joe, signed between throwing on his sweatshirt and grabbing his keys off the kitchen counter.

_ -I'll be late tonight. _

_ -How much longer? _

_ -Not long. _

_ -Be safe. _

It’s Thursday, so Joe’s poker group should have come over with leftovers in neat little plastic containers. It’s intense, watching the group sign around hands of cards and play their silent games, and Baby regrets missing it. Still, they definitely helped Joe into bed and turned out the lights when they left, and maybe, just maybe, there’s casserole left in the fridge for when he gets home.)

"No."

Doc sighs, and idles even though the light's turned green. After a long moment, he makes a U turn and starts driving in the direction of one of the richer neighborhoods around Atlanta. Turns start getting confident, and Baby recognizes the look on Doc’s face as one of a man who is on his way home after a long day at work.

“If something’s really messed up between your ears, people will start asking questions and connecting dots. As much as I trust you to take care of yourself, I want to keep an eye on you, just in case.”

“Are you an actual doctor?” He knows he isn’t going to get an answer, but he’s never seen Doc like this. 

Worried. 

Caring. 

Human.

“You should sleep, Baby.”

He doesn’t argue.

 

(“ _ My son.” _ )

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He doesn’t remember anything specific about the car.

It was a normal run for him, get into the car, get any cash in the glove compartment, any CDs in the console for his little skipping walkman. Go on a joyride if the car was any good, drop it somewhere, rinse and repeat. (He vaguely remembers the name on the registration the way you remember the name of a passing character in a movie that you don’t know is going to be important to the plot later. He hates that; he wishes that the world would tell him if something was meaningful, if he would have to remember it because it’d be gone the next day and he’d miss it.)

He liked the chase, getting to outrun something or someone important. He wasn’t perfect yet, but he could hotwire a car in under forty seconds now, and it was the type of thing that lit up sparks behind his eyes. He liked feeling the beating of his heart and tasting adrenaline. None of his thoughts could catch up to him on the road.

Nothing could.

It figures that the one time he let a Mercedes go to the bottom of the river just to see it sink, someone caught him.

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When Baby wakes up, they’re in Tuxedo Park surrounded by mansions, and yeah, he probably should have seen this coming. He didn’t expect Doc to live in a shithole apartment like he did, but he sure as hell didn’t expect... this.

The house they’re pulling up the long driveway to is as modern as a multi-million dollar home in Atlanta can be, perched on top of a hill and lit up to the high heavens. It’s the last place Baby’d ever expect Doc to live, hiding in plain sight like this. He expected some upper middle class home with a nice garden and neighborhood kids playing down the block, a lamp lit in the window behind thin lace curtains. Doc could pass well for a commuter save for the hours he keeps, so the unsubtle, distinguished fortress they park in front of is a surprise to say the least. 

He hides in plain sight, Baby thinks.

By this point, Baby’s collection of Sinatra’s discography has looped at least twice, and he feels like something out of a black and white film, opening the car door and stepping out while swaying his head to New York, New York. 

“Thought I was going to be late at the office,” Doc says as he locks the car behind them and strides to the door. Baby always thought the people that lived in places like this would have a footman to bring the car around or open the door for them, but Doc was never the type to have people handle personal matters for him in any way, shape, or form. He’d have a crew handle a heist or sunset a ride, but would never think of letting someone answer his phone or count the cash out for him.

When the pass through the doors into a house lit only by the light bleeding in through the thick glass windows—bulletproof, Baby assumes—their footsteps echo off of white walls and dark floors for a few, liminal seconds. He catalogues everything: the grand piano in the corner, the sleek fireplace surrounded by chesterfield sofas, the abstracted portraits in subdued colors, the long stretch of a dining room table, the smell of stale and clean and— 

An alarm blares a warning whine. Loud.

Baby winces and puts his hands over his ears, and when he turns around, Doc’s at a keypad he didn’t notice before, punching in a code so that the noise stops. He toes off his shoes with practiced ease, turns on lamps as he walks deeper into the greatroom, and disappears around a corner with the motions of a man used to existing in this space alone on a kind of autopilot reserved for home.

Doc walks back around the corner, holding a stack of folded clothes. “Furniture’s not going to bite you if you actually walk into the room, Baby.”

Sure enough, Baby takes steps behind Doc further into the house, and the floor doesn’t swallow him whole. The space seems so cavernous and tidy that it barely feels lived in. He catches himself looking for scattered miscellania, like post-its reminding him to  _ get milk on the way home  _ or ipods left on kitchen counters. The whole place feels like the magazine clippings Baby’s mother kept in a scrapbook, of rooms decorated to the nines but still so empty because it seemed like no one would ever set foot inside.

He walked down a narrow hallway into the only room with a lamp lit, a nice little guest room that’s still probably over half the size of his and Joe’s apartment. Doc places the pile of clothes on a desk in the corner and lowers the blinds over a view of the city bustling below. Baby sits on the bed and practically sinks into the mattress and sheets, so soft that he’s reminded again of how heavy his eyelids are as he watches Doc putter around the room, fixing up little things and adjusting the lights in the swift, efficient manner Baby’s always seen him in.

“Clothes on the desk are pajamas. Bathroom is the door next to the closet. Breakfast is at eight sharp.” Though the words are that of a concierge, Doc speaks them like a drill sergeant. Everything is a command without him speaking it as so, and Baby wonders if he’s even conscious of it.

Still, a part of him aches to say  _ thank you _ for this. Doc could’ve easily left him off at his own apartment, on the table in the warehouse, back on the street with a target on his head for stealing a Mercedes worth ten times as much as him. 

Instead, the words that leave his mouth are “I’m sorry.”

Doc, to his credit, at least looks surprised. Maybe amused, but still surprised. “You’re sorry?”

“I drove sloppy, Goodie was right. He was right and now he’s dead.” He’s trying not to let himself get worked up over this because he knows he’s tired and his head is pounding, but if he lets this sink in for just a second, he knows it’s going to come crashing down.

“Cut the crap, Baby.” He stands up straight from where he was adjusting the bedside lamp, makes eye contact that’s uncomfortable and harsh. “Even after you save his life, he knocks you onto the pavement for getting banged up, and you think he’s in the right? He called himself Goodie Two Shoes, then goes and punches my good luck charm. He was asking to get himself killed with a move like that.”

There’s a long moment while Baby is trying to think of what to say, how to respond to something like that, but Doc’s expression shutters over. “Get some sleep, Baby,” he says, and leaves the room without another word.

Baby takes the clothes and walks into the bathroom, a space too big and unused for his tastes, all italian marble and echoes while he changes into something too big and too small for him at once. The only comfortable thing about it is the fabric, light and cold against his collar. The shirt seems too loose where it hangs off his shoulders, while the pants are over an inch too short at the ankles, but he’s just grateful to be out of the clothes that still reek of a hospital. He leaves his old clothes on the counter while he rinses the blood out of his mouth, watches it spiral down the drain, down, down, down, down in a way that makes him nauseous as he splashes water on his face. 

“ _ Fly me to the moon _ ,” Sinatra sings, and Baby doesn’t even have the heart to sway along with it. Walking back to the bed, he flicks off every lamp he passes until he hits the sheets in the cool glow of the alarm clock. In the light of  _ 1:49 AM _ , he lowers the volume of his music, buries his face in the sheets, and freezes.

He presses his nose in the sheets, all charcoal grey and softer than anything he'd ever slept on before, and he smells lavender soap so familiar that it brings tears to his eyes. It takes a minute to register where he knows it from, because there’s something wrong about it, cool to the touch and not warm like sunlight, but he’s instantly transported to his own backyard, vinyl siding, drying t-shirts, and all.

It isn't it, but it's close, and he shouldn't be finding it here, in the guest room of his boss’ house while his concussion is still playing percussion behind his eyes.

When sleep finally hits him, he’s trying not to cry. 

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He remembers his hands still shaky with his sign language, but voice warbling with disuse. The expression of the man that was sitting across from him was something crossed between frustration and intrigue. The Who was yelling in his ears. My Generation.

“Did you steal my car?”

Baby knew it’s a straightforward question, one that he was supposed to answer with  _ No, sir _ because people always were and always will be disarmed by a little kid that’s polite if slightly downtrodden. Odds are, he thought, he probably did steal the car, and Baby bet he knew it, too. He didn’t wanna lie, and it didn’t help that the guy sat him down in some old coffee shop and bought him a muffin (Cassie’s, he thinks it was called back then. It’d go through ten owners and five rebrandings before it’d end up being called Octane).

_ It’s this guy’s fault for being so trusting, _ Baby thought.  _ And for pretending to be nice. _

“I dunno,” he said finally while picking at the last of the crumbs left in the wrapper.

“Mercedes C-Class, licence plate 2261 AHJ.”

Oh.

Of course it was that one.

“Don’t fuck with me, kid, I’ve got it on camera.” The man didn’t cross his arms, didn’t glare, just drummed his fingers on the table, in time with the beat of the song. “I know it’s at the bottom of the fucking Chattahoochee. Did you do it, or didn’t you?”

Baby remembers the drum solo of the song and how it matched his heartbeat.

“Fine,” Baby says. He had his muffin, he had his moment of respite. His eyes flicked out the window, to passing cars. He felt the muscles in his fingers tighten on the edge of the table.  First sign of trouble, he was going to bolt.

A beat. The corner of the man’s mouth lifted slightly. It was barely a smile, but it was there.

“Good.”

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When Doc wakes him up, it’s still dark and the clock only reads  _ 3:32 AM _ . He asks Baby questions about how he’s feeling, and Baby answers them. He’s lucid. He’s good. His head doesn’t hurt when he sleeps, so please, Doc, hush up.

He’s out before his head hits the pillow.

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He remembers drifting on an empty racetrack, back when his feet barely reached the pedals unless he moved the seat up all the way, back when he was still losing teeth and the wound on his eyebrow hadn't fully healed yet. Queen was in his ears, Brighton Rock blaring from a brand new ipod. He drove fast because it felt like second nature; because it made the roar in his ears become ambient noise. 

It was a commuter model, he remembers, maybe a Toyota that’d been grabbed from a parking garage. It still had an air freshener hanging from the mirror, a little pine tree that made the space smell more like evergreen and less like burning rubber and fumes.

He was pushed 80 on the last straightaway just because he could, and because he wanted to prove that he would when the time came. 

Whenever that was. 

When he crossed the finish line in an empty stadium, Doc nodded. Smiled.   

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_ 5:29 AM. _

“You good, kid?”

“I’m fine.”

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Baby barely remembers his first heist outside of a blur of adrenaline and close calls, but he remembers lying in bed for hours afterward. He could hear the ceiling rattling under the footsteps of the floor above and a steady, thumping bass from a speaker system somewhere in the building, but it all chorused with California Dreamin’ in his earbuds.

Doc had clapped him on the shoulder and told him  _ You did good kid, keep it up _ , unsurprised as though he wasn’t some coffee-boy-turned-getaway-driver like he was to the rest of the crew. It had felt good, leaving the warehouse with the praise in his pocket, replacing the dread he was expecting. He knew it would come later, and, after a few jobs, it would eclipse whatever pride was in the back of his throat. For now, though, he wasn’t a criminal, just a kid who drove like a bat out of hell and was still riding the high.

That had been hours ago, though, and he was just starting to feel the exhaustion beneath his jumping heartbeat.

In the room barely lit by the moon and the streetlamp right outside, he remembers going up to the mirror by his bed, a picture of his mother tucked into the frame.

Maybe it was the lighting, but he could see so much of her face in his, the slope of his cheekbones when he smiled, the tired look in his eyes. People always said he’d grow up to look like his father, but he didn’t keep any pictures of him around to compare. 

He wondered if his mom would be proud of him, proud of how he found something he was good, no,  _ great at _ , but it only look a second to remember the context of it. Sure, he could have her memory pat him on the back, but at the end of the day, he was a kid driving for bank heists to pay off a debt.

_ It is what it is _ , he imagined her saying, brushing the hair from his forehead in the darkened room, voice barely audible over the music in his ears.

More than anything, he wants to remember her voice.

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When Baby wakes up this time, It’s on his own. The sun’s just barely bleeding through the curtains, and the pain in his head is concentrated to a dull ache. The clock reads 6:15 AM, and he rolls his shoulders as he sits up, buzzing rattling around in his empty ears. He reaches for his ipod, sitting on the night table. Doc must’ve taken the buds out of his ears and turned off the thing sometime during the night, and he’s quietly thankful for it. He boots it up and scrolls through the list of artists while he eases himself out of bed. The covers, for all their unfamiliarity, are hard to escape from, especially with the smell of lavender.

Yesterday's clothes are hung over the back of the desk chair, and when he picks them up, they smell just like the sheets and are still dryer-warm. Baby takes them into the bathroom, and he looks, really looks around the space for the first time, at what luxury looks like without it trying to, soft towels the color of snow, mirrors that stretch across an entire wall, clean lines, cold tile. 

Baby finally decides on Nina Simone, not exactly the mellow jazz music that Doc had in mind, but miles better than Bix Beckerbie or Dave Brubeck right now. He wants lyrics, he wants something to sing along to, he wants to feel cool, he wants something that makes him feel like he belongs in this house.

He turns on the shower and adjusts with the pressure until the sound of the droplets matches the running piano of Sinnerman before he takes out his earbuds and sheds his pajamas. His tinnitus fills the space quickly in the absence of music until he sets the ipod on a pile of too-nice towels and cranks the volume until Nina Simone’s voice is ringing through the room. 

It’s always bizarre to shower in a stranger’s house, especially with the acoustics in a place like this. Baby is used to the cramped space in Joe’s apartment with the store brand shampoo and the cheap waterproof radio, not this magazine clipping stocked with french soaps he can’t pronounce. 

By the time the first half of the greatest hits album has come and gone, he’s pretty sure he’s washed his face with conditioner and he’s starting to feel the sharpest edges of his headache subside with the steam. He thinks he hears the sounds of pans and plates from somewhere in the house so, as the last notes of the song fade out, he shuts off the water and starts to make himself look presentable.

In the mirror, his black eye looks worse than it feels, and he wishes he had a pair of sunglasses, but he can’t find any in the pockets of his jacket. He’s going to have to get together a good excuse for Joe, or he’s going to have to face that look of disappointment he knows too well from too many jobs and too many late nights when he comes home smelling like gasoline.

 

It is what it is.

 

When he’s standing outside of the kitchen, he’s hit with the smell of frying bacon, and the memories almost knocks him off his feet with the force of it. He’s suddenly nostalgic for the greasy breakfasts at Bo’s Diner, the ones his mom could replicate perfectly with her eyes closed in their little linoleum kitchen.

“Simone wasn’t exactly what I meant by calm jazz,” Doc calls out, and before Baby walks into the room proper, he switches on a playlist of old swing music. He really, really doesn’t want to incur the wrath of Doc, especially not over something like his music.

The Glenn Miller Band fills his ears as he finds Doc at the stove in the cavernous space with a wooden spoon in hand. "You should eat." He says, and slides the contents of the frying pan onto two plates, already laden with toast and eggs. 

Silence. Now that it’s in front of him, it looks like a betrayal.

"Okay, fine, there's cereal in the cabinet next to the fridge. The top one."

Baby wordlessly opens the cabinet and is met with a line of boxes, all name brand, no store brand. He grabs the only box with bright colors and, when he turns around, catches Doc placing a bowl on the island across from where he has his own plate.

“Lucky Charms? Good call,” He says, sitting down with a cup of coffee and the morning paper. “I only keep it around for my nephew. He loves the stuff, don’t know why.”

Baby’s almost never seen him out of the warehouse and parking garage, so it’s surreal to witness him comfortable in domesticity, like how kids can’t fathom teachers existing outside of school. 

He realizes that he’s been staring for a second too long, and acts quickly, pouring the cereal. He opens the fridge to find milk and—

“There’s a gun in your fridge.” It’s comical, how the pistol is wedged in a bowl of strawberries. It’s like something out of a cartoon. Or a spy movie.

“There’s a gun in my fridge,” Doc confirms. “Just like there’s one under the desk in the guest room, in the cabinet of your bathroom, two in the master, one next to the pokers for the fireplace, and one on the underside of the countertop right here. Hell, if you strolled through the backyard, every other potted plant and deck chair has one. It’s a necessary safety procedure.” He looks up from the paper, over the edge of his glasses. “Now finish up with the milk and close the fridge. You’re letting out the cold.”

Baby does so, and, once he starts in on the bowl of cereal, he realizes how hungry he’d been. A part of him realizes that he hadn’t had dinner last night, and not much of a lunch the afternoon before either. It doesn’t matter that he’s eating Lucky Charms in the house of Atlanta’s most notorious kingpin, because right now he’s  _ eating _ . With Benny Goodman’s music crooning in his ears, everything is a tranquil that he’d expect in a commercial. Yeah there’s a pistol in the fridge and another beneath the counter, but someone made him breakfast and is sitting across from him reading the newspaper in companionable silence. For once, he’s allowed to focus on the marshmallows floating in the bowl like a kid could.

But once he's done, his attention is drawn to where Doc is still intently focused on the paper, an editorial on the recent string of bank robberies. He's reading it as a general views battle maps, to the point that he leaves and comes back with a legal pad to take notes, with his breakfast as an afterthought. For every moment that he seems at peace, there’s another three where he’s in his element, jotting down addresses and contacts, plotting escape routes, recounting favors. It’s a strange type of casual. Calculated, but casual. 

This is the man that killed someone in cold blood just a few hours ago.

“I can hear you thinking from all the way over here, Baby. If this is about Two Shoes—" Doc says, not looking up from the work in front of him. He takes a bite of his eggs. "He knew the rules. He made his decisions, and it's on him."

"You shot him." Baby says the words before he knows he thought them. It's not accusatory, not even confused, just truth.

"He got himself shot." Doc sets his silverware aside, wipes at the corners of his mouth with a napkin. "You live in this business for much longer, you learn to make that distinction."

When he's met with silence, he continues. "He bought into a high stakes game knowing the risks, then thought he could cheat the dealer. People like him are a dime a dozen, trying to steal from the house based on a flimsy assumption that he knows what he's doing. My god, I hate those people."

"I'm not one of them." The words sound dumb on Baby's tongue.

"You're not one of them," Doc agrees. He stacks his fork and knife on his plate and places it all in the sink. He refills his coffee from the pot next to the stove, and this time when he sits down to work, looks Baby in the eye. He looks like he’s about to say something, but catches himself. He turns back to his papers before he finally speaks. "You remember Fish?"

Yes. 

"No."

“Of course you do. The one with the scar. Killer shot. Debating bring her in for this next run. Her trial’s over for that whole dealing mess, and we need someone intimidating looking.” He pauses, takes a sip of his coffee. He looks up, awaiting Baby’s approval, and it catches him off guard. He shrugs his shoulders noncommittally. Fish seemed nice, in a gruff ‘I’ll-gut-you-and-serve-the-fillet-for-dinner’ type of way. 

In hindsight, maybe not that nice.

“No, maybe I'll bring in Griff. You don't know him, friend of a friend, someone I used to work with before your time.” A beat. Baby knows Doc’s face when he’s talked himself into something, like he’s weighing the pros and cons but is already patting himself on the back for an idea well thought. “Buddy and Darling will have burned through their cash, already. They’re good for low-stakes heists like this: not quite a small time bank, not quite Fort Knox. First Bank of Atlanta down on Peachtree’s been quiet.” He’s already scribbling down notes, drawing rough maps in the margins. “With the roadwork, traffic in bad form, but I’ll make sure that maintenance is done by the time you can drive again—” 

“You want me to drive again?” Baby feels the surprise in his tone more than hears it, because Doc wants  _ him _ on a run.

There’s a confused silence as Doc puts down his pen and looks up from what’s already a sprawling map of the surrounding streets. “Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts after a minor fender bender like that.”

“But I fucked up. I endangered the team.” Baby pushes his bowl away from him, skips whatever song is on just so he can have something to do with his hands.

“Jesus, you really took what he said to heart, didn’t you?” Doc taps the tip of the pen onto the countertop, and the sound echoes in the room. “Don’t let the dead rule your life, Baby. I pay you to deal with the here and now.”

Baby feels his jaw clench, but Doc doesn’t notice his slip of the tongue. Whatever domestic illusion Baby has is shattered. He’s reminded that Doc takes good care of his property and that inviting Baby into his home was probably maintenance, a concussion with a Check Engine light, a flat tire with a headache.

(“ _ My son. _ ” 

It sounds like a joke, now.)

Something changes in the way Doc holds himself once he realizes that Baby’s expression’s clouded over. It’s obvious he realizes that he’s misstepped somewhere. When he speaks again, his voice is the leveled meter Baby’s used to hearing for business. “I wasn’t planning on telling you this so early, but, based on the haul from the next job, you could very well have your debt paid off sooner rather than later.”

“With or without the hospital bills?” 

“Don’t you worry about that, Baby.” Doc stands up, and Baby doesn’t miss how his eyes flicker to window, past the flower pots with hidden pistols, past the pool, past the buildings of the city proper, to the sun that’s rising higher and higher in the sky. “High time we be getting you home, don’t you think?”

On the car ride back to his apartment building, Baby sleeps in the warm morning light, not because he needs to, but because he doesn’t want to be awake anymore.

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Baby wishes he couldn’t remember anything; Baby wishes he could remember everything.

He drives to outrun everything; he drives to catch up to it all.

This time, he doesn’t dream of any memory, just of the feelings of sharp turns and loud music.

Baby dreams of driving without a destination.

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When Baby wakes up, the car’s parked outside his apartment complex, and Doc glances at him as he sits up and undoes his seatbelt.

“Your cut and your burner,” he says, and he reaches into the pocket of his suit jacket for a wad of cash and flip phone. Baby takes them quickly, puts both items in the pockets of his own jacket. He doesn’t live in the best neighborhood, but one nice enough that a trade of cash that big would be noticed.

With that, he nods at Doc and opens the car door. By now, his ipod’s looped the playlist and he’s back to a Duke Ellington song. Trumpets blare as one of his feet hits the sidewalk, but Doc looks like he has something he wants to say. 

“I’ll call you when it’s time. Feel better soon,” he finally says, and Baby nods again.

“Thank you.” He means it, for everything that Doc’s done, but he doesn’t know how well it comes across as he shuts the door behind him. The brass section blares. Doc’s Mercedes pulls back into the traffic. 

It is what it is.

**Author's Note:**

> Some final notes on content:
> 
>   * I know Goodie Two Shoes’ name doesn’t necessarily fit the naming conventions set up by the movie, but I couldn’t resist a good pun like that. 
>   * Though I can't attest to it being the location of the First Bank of Atlanta, the Bellbottoms scene at the beginning of movie was filmed on Peachtree Street. How do I know this? A Quiznos is very briefly shown in the background, and I may or may not have searched Google Maps for every Quiznos in Atlanta to find that one.
> 

> 
> This was so much fun to write, and I promise I haven't forgotten With Music In His Ears! This is the longest one-shot I've ever written, and I'd really appreciate any comments or kudos you have to offer.


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